Communication and document control in Construction

My undergraduate degree is in communication arts. I am currently working on a master’s degree from the University of Florida in International Construction Management and for years I have joked that my thesis would be on communication in the construction industry. I figured it would be the shortest thesis in history.

However over the last ten years I have become convinced of the importance of good document control during the construction process as well as for efficient facilities management after the project is done. I have also observed that people mistake the use of web-based document control and project management programs for good communication and often neglect the soft skills of simply picking up a telephone and calling another party when there are problems on a project or when they are shipping out documents.  These document control and project management programs are not a substitute for personal communication – they are simply tools. 

And like all tools, if they are not properly used they will fail. 

These programs fail for the following reasons: 

• Some large firms have their own programs and prefer to use them. 
• It takes a lot of time to learn to use one of these programs and most companies do not have the time or manpower to invest in them, especially if they have their own. 
• Loading and downloading plans, especially large amounts at one time, is time consuming and people prefer email. 
• Not everyone likes to read off screens and some still want hard copies. 
• Large projects can have multiple people loading documents. If they do not follow the document naming protocol to a “t” the documents become unsearchable. 
• People often neglect reading notifications due to information overload; this is especially true when there is no defined communication tree and documents are sent out to all parties regardless of relevance to their work needs. 
• People get busy and have deadlines and sometimes forget to upload documents. 
• The sites are typically owned by the contractor or design team instead of the building owner. If there are issues on the project or if the owner does not assume control of the site and continue payment after project completion he can lose control of his documents. 
• Some of these programs are expensive; especially if you have to buy licenses for a large amount of team members. 

I was recently asked what I thought was the solution to these kinds of issues.  
One solution would be to use email, a large file transfer site or cloud storage along with a transmittal protocol and only send out notifications of transmittal for tracking purposes. Final documents would be loaded at the end of the project. However, since some of these document management programs have nice bells and whistles including request for information (RFI) notification and logs and Auto CAD viewing and markup capability that would be a shame. 

Another potential solution would be to have the owner of the project responsible to load all documents using the same person. That person would be a trained document controller with good communication skills and who understands the construction process. He would also be responsible to make sure all parties are notified promptly when documents are posted and where to find them. However this could require a team of people for large projects with thousands of documents otherwise it would slow the entire project down. 

With the advent of i Cloud storage and multi-national project teams using web-based technology, a solution is probably close at hand. Regardless of how good the program is, the key to its success will ultimately still remain with the project manager and his team and how well they communicate together.